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Roman Empire by Train with Alice Roberts - Season 1 - Episode 02: I'm Spartacus
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00:03I'm on another train and another adventure into the past, but this is my most ambitious
00:11journey to date. I'm going in search of the Roman Empire. Taking the train I'll be traveling 1,300
00:23miles through Italy, France and Spain to discover the origins and secrets of its success. I'll be
00:33exploring some well-known Roman sites. This is where you can hear Pompeii. And some unfamiliar ones.
00:40There is nobody here. From the massive to the miniature. It's like a fourth century Barbie
00:48doll. I want to know how a single city comes to control such a vast territory. Experts from around
00:56the world will help bring Roman culture to life. The sands of Capua become the jungles of India.
01:03Revealing clues to the Empire's success that lie all around us. Who said the time machine does not
01:09exist? We got it. In this episode, I'll be traveling to the Roman town where gladiators were schooled.
01:17This is actually from gladiator. It's actually from gladiator. I discover the secret meeting place
01:23of a cult. We came face to face with Mithras and the seaside resort for the Roman elite that met
01:31a
01:31tragic end. So we're not still in this courtyard. We are. Yeah, we are. This is huge.
01:50There's no denying that Naples is a beautiful and vibrant city.
02:03If I lived here though, I don't think I'd be truly relaxed. Not because of the bustling traffic,
02:10but because of nearby Mount Vesuvius, regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world.
02:19I've already seen how the eruption in the year 79 CE affected Pompeii, 15 miles away.
02:27But there's another town I want to explore that experienced the same event, but with different
02:33results. Once again, the reliable Italian train system will help get me there. Trouble
02:43is. They haven't grasped how important I am. There's no first class, unfortunately. Insert your
02:53cars. It's printing my... Oh, they're here. There we go.
03:04I'm beginning to enjoy the Italian railway system. It's clean and efficient and easy to navigate.
03:12I think I'm here. Piazza Garibaldi. And I'm going, for most people anyway, to... I'm going this
03:22way. Here we go. So I'm going on this line. This trip is going to take half an hour, so
03:31€1.80
03:32is a very reasonable price. Especially when you consider the view.
04:04It's another beautiful morning. This time I'm on the train again, a
04:07course but i'm not going as far as pompeii i'm making my way on the same train line
04:12around the bay of naples but i'm going to stop off at el calano another town also known of course
04:18as
04:18herculaneum eight miles from naples el calano lies to the west side of mount vesuvius
04:31this coastal town has long attracted people who enjoy a more relaxed way of life
04:38oh this is absolutely gorgeous isn't it look at that beautiful beautiful
04:43mediterranean and we're looking at the bay of naples of course and there's naples itself
04:47and i've just traveled on the train all the way along the coast to here to el calano
04:56it's a short walk from the station to the herculaneum architectural park
05:01and you can certainly tell by its entrance it's going to be something spectacular
05:07unlike the larger pompeii this site is closer to naples but not as popular and you can see it all
05:15in one day oh here's a lovely view down over the site of herculaneum and you can see that it's
05:23right underneath modern echolano and it's different from pompeii it is smaller there are far fewer
05:30tourists here but it's different in other ways as well the preservation is different
05:35and i'm really intrigued to find out about the current research projects that are happening right
05:39here i'm hoping herculaneum will shed a different light on roman life whereas pompeii was a busy
05:49trading hub this was a small seaside resort for the rich with only around 5 000 inhabitants
05:57the town takes its name from the god hercules and was a greek colony for many centuries
06:04it came under the control of rome in 89 bce but not for long
06:12when vesuvius erupted tons of ash and poisonous gases hurtled towards the town at 300 kilometers per hour
06:22burying it up to a depth of 26 meters essentially mummifying it unlike pompeii buildings of two and three
06:31stories are still intact
06:44it's just astonishing how well preserved this is i mean i've just walked into the changing rooms of the
06:52female baths we think these are the female bars and you've got these shells around the walls
06:58where you're maybe gonna put your clothes take a towel and the ridges on the ceiling which are
07:06almost corrugated help any moisture drip down you're just stepping back into the first century
07:20the temperature of the ash cloud is thought to have been around 400 degrees celsius so anything
07:27flammable was set alight but then promptly extinguished as fires were quickly smothered by the ash
07:35evidence of this is to be found in the carbonized woodwork that can be seen around the town
07:41in fact the preservation of roman craftsmanship here is jaw-dropping
07:48wow i remember this so well from coming here when i was 15. it's so beautiful this mosaic image and
07:57all around the edge you've got seashells it's so special herculaneum's coastal location clean air and mild
08:08climate made it a haven for rich families who expected nothing but the best
08:17oh that's beautiful look at that shrine made out of tiny tesseree
08:26and there are lovely frescoes on the wall depicting a garden this is the house of the skeleton because
08:33the skeleton of an unfortunate individual who didn't escape was found in the upstairs rooms
08:41excavations began here in the early 18th century a time when antiquarians were more concerned with
08:48finding and removing treasures than learning about the past
08:55workers dug crude tunnels but eventually stopped and switched their attention to pompeii
09:01where the ash was nowhere near as deep
09:06excavations resumed here in the early 20th century but because ercolano sits tightly around the ancient
09:13site only around 25 percent of the original roman town has been uncovered work today involves conserving
09:22what's already been done
09:26there are fines trays full of small archaeological finds and then two beautiful statues armless headless
09:36but with rather fantastic drakery
09:43i'm in awe at just how much the town exists as it was before the eruption sealed it in a
09:50time capsule
09:51nearly 2 000 years ago
09:55all that's missing are the roman citizens who spent their lives here
10:01i'm going to meet peer paolo petroni whose excavation work on what used to be herculaneum's
10:08seafront has helped explain what happened to the population hello alice yeah paolo how are you i'm
10:16really good it's lovely to meet you i've not been down to this bit of herculaneum before
10:21so it's the first time yeah this is a very important place to understand what happened
10:25at that time of the eruption can we have a can we have a closer look i mean i can
10:29see a lot of
10:30material there there are now fiberglass reconstructions of what peer paolo discovered nearly 30 years ago
10:39oh goodness you're just confronted with the reality of it this is a family group
10:43there is a young woman with three children a male have you done ancient dna analysis on all of these
10:51skeletons some of them some of them we know where they come from and many of them probably were slaves
10:58how do you tell that in some cases we found bones legs with the kind of oxidation and in few
11:06cases
11:07some metal rings so with shackles still on yes yeah and what does it tell you more broadly about the
11:12population of herculaneum when this disaster struck here on the beach were found around 300 victims
11:19another 50 inside the town so all together three four hundred victims but we know that at that time
11:271780 probably the population of herculaneum was about four or five thousand people so that tell us
11:34that the most of the people evacuated the town in time these we don't know why they're here probably
11:40because they knew what an earthquake was so there would have been tremors leading up to the eruption
11:46at the beginning of the eruption yes there were yeah 17 years before in 62 80 there was a very
11:52strong
11:52earthquake yeah and that earthquake killed a lot of people and destroyed many buildings so they knew
11:57that this kind of chambers were very safe oh okay for them but not at all for an eruption the
12:04ash cloud
12:05was so hot and that we know due to their postures that they died instantly this kind of stance is
12:13called
12:14lifelike stance everyone stays like it was in the last moments of life do you think these people
12:22would even have realized what was happening i mean would they have had any time to appreciate that that
12:27this was it that this was the end no i don't think at all so they had no time to
12:31understand they were
12:32dying they knew about earthquakes so they were sheltering here inside yeah they were afraid of course
12:39yeah but they didn't know anything about vesubius as a volcano yeah they didn't know at all what the
12:44eruption was so they could not know what was going to happen to them yeah next i visit the excavation
12:57of an
12:57absolutely palatial roman villa and trace the footsteps of the original 18th century explorers who first
13:04discovered this site there's there's archaeology everywhere these tunnels are archaeology in
13:10themselves is the history of archaeology yeah yeah yes
13:21i'm in herculaneum just south of naples in the shadow of mount vesuvius
13:28this small town was once the playground of the rich a seaside resort for the roman elite until
13:36vesuvius drowned it in volcanic ash i'm waiting to meet francesco serrano the site's director
13:45francesco hi lovely to meet you i want to quiz him about a very special place tell me about the
13:54villa of
13:54papyri i mean that is an extraordinary house full of books from you know the roman world i mean it
14:02blows my mind that you've got preservation of actual roman books from the first century
14:07there is the only roman place where we find the library
14:141018 scrolls is unbelievable between the scrolls we have scrolls from the third century bc
14:22so you've got scrolls that were already 400 years old by the time they ended up in this library yes
14:29they were already antiques that's amazing indeed yeah can we go in to the villa of the
14:35of course of course just wanted to ask you about footwear because i'm wearing sandals
14:39better boat boots boots i have boots with me right let's go
14:47the villa of the papyri sits to the north of the herculaneum site
14:53walking there we are flanked by cliffs of solidified ash from the volcanic eruption
14:58of 79 when the landscape was transformed
15:04vesuvius is still active with the last major eruption happening during world war ii
15:11you 1944 the last big one yeah yes are you due another one no no no no maybe the volcano
15:20have a
15:20very big eruption each 400 years okay but we can't uh presume no exactly no you know the volcano is
15:30but you've got seismologists monitoring it now yes it's very very yeah uh monitoring yeah
15:37of course because you know you've got you know we we are we are in uh on the feet of
15:43the volcano yeah
15:44yeah yeah three uh 300 000 people 300 almost 400 000 people yeah living around the volcano area
15:53and also we have uh almost one million in airports yeah yeah
16:00the villa was discovered in 1750 by two farmers digging a well excavations began in earnest when
16:09it was realized that what they'd stumbled upon was one of the most luxurious villas in the roman world
16:16this is it this is the villa of the papyri yes we are at the edge on the villa of
16:21the papyri
16:22and we go inside this is currently shut to the public francesco uh yes because we have to do some
16:29works of central work but soon we will open to the public wow stepping straight down onto the mosaic
16:39where are we here we are in a big column hall facing in ancient time facing to the sea really
16:48yes and
16:49now we see some big holes and for dinners official yeah dining room with a view out to the sea
16:57with
16:58with the view but also with very big doors imagine how big was the door here yeah yeah so
17:06i mean this is a palace isn't it this is was it is a palace with all the organization like
17:12a palace
17:12for example for example the big entrance for the hostess but little entrance for the uh um
17:20servino for the servants for the servants yeah yeah the length of the the front of this villa is 250
17:28meters so this is only a fraction of it yeah this is a more or less 30 meters no but
17:35all the front of the
17:36villa is 250 meters no the equivalent of four and a half blocks of the town that's crazy
17:46this opulent villa is thought to have been over 100 years old when it was buried under the ash of
17:52vesuvius it was clearly built for someone extremely wealthy perhaps it's been suggested the father-in-law of
18:00julius caesar okay we go inside the tunnel we're about to enter the tunnels that will lead us to the
18:07only surviving library from the greco-roman world will you lead in francesco okay yes
18:16can we go here this is ash inside the building so this gives you a real impression of what it
18:32was like
18:32for the 18th century people who were discovering arculenium yes they're just mining into it this is
18:40crazy you wouldn't do archaeology like this today usually archaeological digs are conducted downwards
18:47from the surface so i'm not exactly in my comfort zone does it ever collapse no okay good that's
18:55that's reassuring i think is that a little rat yeah probably yeah probably not a roman rat
19:04and now we are approaching the so-called square the peristyle to imagine many columns so it's a
19:12courtyard with columns around it yeah there's there's archaeology everywhere we have the floors look at
19:20that here we see the columns for example hey you see a columns collapsing oh yeah this is the situation
19:30during the direction yeah okay we continue so we're not still in this courtyard we are yeah we are
19:39around this is huge we are yes okay we've got the same mosaic here we must have turned the corner
19:45we're
19:45still within this courtyard and we are between two columns we can measure the distance between the two
19:52columns and to reconstruct the peristyle i was the person oh it's fantastic to come in here because this is
19:5818th century archaeology and first century archaeology i mean these these tunnels are archaeology in
20:06themselves it's a history of archaeology yeah yeah yes yeah and we can continue and there's more of it
20:14i mean it just goes on and on it's riddled with tunnels what's this way francesco now we are approaching
20:21the place where the library was and this is the explorating holes okay so when this was excavated
20:32those holes up there were full of papyri the papyrus scrolls were essentially books and a library
20:40like this would have included legal records accounts literary and scientific works
20:46and they're just tunneling in like this and pulling this papyri out yes yeah once they understand
20:53that was papyri then it was systematically yeah um collecting all the garbage they knew they were
21:00so precious yes yeah the tunnel going off here and another one here oh it comes round nearly a
21:09hundred marble and bronze sculptures were also found within the villa most of which eventually
21:15ended up in the national archaeological museum of naples well i'm so excited to finally get inside
21:24the villa of the papyri i've wanted to go in there for years what an amazing privilege and i can't
21:31help
21:31but wonder what else is left in there i'm sure there's a lot more archaeology to find between the tunnels
21:40my trip to herculaneum has definitely taught me something of the flip side to roman life whereas
21:48pompeii gave an insight into a broader section of roman society herculaneum has shown me the astonishing
21:55wealth enjoyed by a select few the super rich but rich or poor there is no escaping the power of
22:03mother nature
22:09one thing i'm still curious about are those rolls of papyri that were taken from herculaneum
22:17i'm returning to the naples archaeological museum to ask valentina cosentino what information we can
22:25glean from them so these are the actual papyri from this amazing house wow it just looks like a piece
22:37of charcoal doesn't it so what we're looking at is a roll of papyrus paper effectively that is a book
22:45yes but it's been burned yes yeah efforts were made to unravel them in the 19th century but they're
22:53so fragile in the attempt to unroll it you've lost so much haven't you maybe yes we are sure
23:00that this is a greek text about philosophy like the other papyri from the villa and then of course now
23:06we're not attempting to physically unroll them we're attempting to virtually unroll them
23:10with x-rays and ai now yes yeah it's incredible to think that technology will soon unlock these texts
23:20and reveal more secrets of ancient rome
23:26tomorrow i'll be back on the train heading to a small town that left a big impression
23:32on both the city of rome and hollywood
23:46it's another beautiful morning in naples i'm up early to get to the station and resume my roman adventure
24:02my italian's getting pretty good especially if it's related to train travel
24:13today the italian railway network will take me to another satellite town of naples
24:21this time i'm heading north on a 30-minute train ride to capua
24:29capua was founded in the 8th century bce by the etruscans
24:34they originated in tuscany and spread across most of central italy flourishing for 400 years
24:42until the romans came
24:46the etruscans religion artwork and culture would have a major influence on roman life
24:54but when the romans took control of capua they had their own big plan for it
25:14a really central part of of roman culture is this city itself you know these cities are large and
25:23they're growing quickly and that brings with it all sorts of tensions and one of the ways that perhaps
25:30the romans were looking to diffuse those tensions was through entertainment and the focus of that was of
25:37course the amphitheater
25:40the coliseum in rome is the largest and best preserved amphitheater in the world but there are
25:47around 230 others which still exist from st albans in britain to plovdiv in bulgaria
25:57gladiators were certainly top of the bill but these were also venues for musical performances and
26:03religious events sometimes emotions could run high and riots and rebellions could spill out from that
26:14very place i'm off to capua today and it's the home of perhaps the most famous story about a rebellion
26:23that started by a gladiator
26:34the amphitheater is on the other side of capua from the station
26:39so the walk is an opportunity to get to know the town it offers a wealth of italian architectural history
26:51and automotive
26:56evidence of roman history is everywhere sometimes you see it in plain sight
27:06while in other areas you have to look a little closer
27:12so i've been wandering around capua looking at masonry like this and wondering how much of that is
27:19originally roman and then you come across something like this and suddenly it's starkly obvious this is a
27:26statue that's been reused as part of this gateway look at that there's the hand there's another hand down
27:34here lovely drapery down to the feet i think it probably is a roman statue i mean look it could
27:43be
27:43medieval i'd like it to be roman
27:50one thing i can be certain of the citizens of capua in roman times would have enjoyed the fruits of
27:56the land
28:00buongiorno
28:03oh they smell amazing
28:10they look good
28:12it's a couple of lilla
28:14thank you grazie
28:18mm-hmm bonissima delicious yes i'd like those
28:27no you can't give them to me
28:31you can't give them to me
28:38the romans worshipped many different gods groups of people who followed a particular god would be known
28:46as a cult one cult was particularly favored by roman soldiers that of the god called mithras
28:56mithras and there was a temple to mithras in capua somewhere around here
29:02this street art looks to me like a clue
29:06look at this that's mithras right there so i must be getting close
29:15i soon find it but in roman times the entrance to this secret underground cult would have been even
29:21more hidden away
29:33it does feel like a mysterious space
29:40look there are frescoes on the walls just here
29:43figure between two trees and there are stars on the ceiling
29:57and as we approach the end of the chamber we came face to face with mithras
30:05a persian god who's traveled a long way to get here
30:11the romans adopted this eastern god and seem to have added this bull-slaying element to his story
30:19it was a popular cult throughout the empire with many meeting places like this
30:26what an incredible image he's cutting the bull's throat and there's a dog attacking it and there's a
30:34snake and torchbearers to either side and then the sun god up there with a raven as his messenger
30:43and this chamber and the paintings date back to some 1900 years ago this was a very popular mystery cult
30:54with violence at its core it was very popular in the army and perhaps we would have even had gladiators
31:02coming here to be initiated into the cult of mithras
31:08it was strangely next to this homage to violence is a small marble relief
31:13showing the greek god of love eros and the object of his desire psyche
31:25at last i arrive at my objective the amphitheater of capua
31:32there is nobody here just me and the amphitheater
31:48this is huge it's monumental
31:58when it was new and in use it had four stories so very much like the coliseum in rome and
32:05possibly even
32:07a model for the coliseum and there is less of it here but that's because so much of it has
32:12been
32:12heavily plundered i imagine there's a lot of what we're looking at in capua today which has
32:17been built out of stone from here it's a very convenient quarry
32:27it's amazing to come here and for it to be so empty i think you can get a real feel
32:32for the atmosphere of the place
32:37it's not until you enter that you realize the sheer size of the structure
32:44at 139 by 179 meters it's the second largest amphitheater in italy after the coliseum in rome
32:55today it's still a focal point for the local community staging outdoor shows and concerts
33:032 000 years ago audiences would have been entertained too
33:07except they would have been marvelling at the prowess of gladiators
33:15and the one that rebelled well let me remind you of who he was
33:28not much enthusiasm there no nobody but one man with bags of it is gladiator expert
33:39alex mariotti salve salve pleasure to meet you welcome to capua what do you think it's incredible
33:47isn't it and there's nobody here i can't believe it yeah people haven't heard of this place yeah yeah
33:53tourists will go to the coliseum they go to the main sites but places like this are completely forgotten
33:57it's just wonderful to shed a light on just how much italy has to offer an enormous amount and when
34:03you get off the beaten track as well yeah yeah and look and look what's waiting for you it's not
34:07even
34:07like a couple of stones i mean you really get a sense i'd say even more than the coliseum at
34:11times
34:11as to what the games were about what the spectacles were about yeah i've been wondering around above
34:16ground and wherever i've gone you've got these grills so i'm sensing there's this whole underground story
34:22to dig into as well you are completely correct what's wonderful is not what you see it's what you
34:27don't often get to see and it's just down these stairs over here come with me i'm about to go
34:31down
34:32into a world of violence high drama and revolution
34:44i'm with gladiator expert alex mariotti at the amphitheater in capua italy these are the original
34:52bricks you can see the nice thin brick where i'm about to enter the hypergium the underground part of it
34:59i get the feeling that this is very much kind of backstage as it were yeah this is the heart
35:04and
35:04soul of of the amphitheater imagine first of all the beasts from the farthest reaches of the empire
35:09being brought here traveling along this very tunnel to be brought to the cages to then be loaded up onto
35:15the ramps which would pop out of nowhere and just wow the crowd then of course of course the the
35:21important
35:22people of of this whole show the the athletes the gladiators would themselves be walking along
35:27preparing themselves for the fight warming up as they're getting there yeah thinking about what
35:32tactics they're going to use fighting to the death no the movies have led us to believe that gladiators
35:38are a fight to the death they're these poor slaves the truth is that they were prime athletes who were
35:44trained to have professional contracts then it's just because there was so much money time and effort
35:49involved in creating them that killing them didn't make much sense what you would have had is rows
35:55of trapdoors above us with the sand which is called harina which is where we get the word arena and
36:01corresponding to these trapdoors were lifts so if we were spectators right now we'd probably be
36:05getting our seats getting our food and drinks and meanwhile underground what they're doing is they're
36:10loading trees onto the lifts underneath the trapdoors so you can imagine we start to hear the music
36:16the crowd begins to chant and they start pulling ropes and suddenly as the ropes are pulled the lift
36:21goes up the trapdoor pops and the tree pops out of the ground a tree a tree one two three
36:27fifty trees
36:28all of a sudden the sands of capua become the jungles of india so a place you're never going to
36:33visit in
36:34your life but you don't need to because the amphitheater is where the romans bring the world to you and
36:39suddenly the trapdoor falls and a hunter runs out another trapdoor a panther or a tiger or a lion
36:47and you and i would have sat there in the stands eating and drinking from an almost aerial view
36:52watching a hunter stalk or be stalked by a wild animal from the farthest reaches of the empire to
36:58a soundtrack so of course as he's building up as he's getting closer to the beast the music starts to
37:03build and as they're fighting the music crescendos and he stabs the the beast the music finishes the
37:09crowd erupts and the trees would pop down back into the ground sand and it's the halftime show and it
37:16disappears and it vanishes this mirror it disappears and here's where the magic happened that's the thing
37:21about the hyper gym is that the spectators don't see this part all the trickery that makes the game so
37:25fantastic took place right where we are so you must have been talking about a huge number of people
37:31staffing this yeah yeah about maybe six seven hundred people a lot went into the games which is why they
37:37didn't happen as often as we think there's a lot of money involved in organizing it and who's paying
37:42for it well technically the emperor's paying for it it's his social media allowance it's a social media
37:47budget yeah yeah that's that's how he promotes it because yes we're watching uh lions and hunters and
37:55gladiators but ultimately what are we doing we're saying thank you to the emperor because who's who's
38:00paid for the open bar who's given us the free token for the buffet who's put on all the show
38:05the
38:05emperor so he's selling a product and the product is don't worry about the government don't worry about
38:09ruling i'm in charge and as long as you let me in charge and come back next month entertainment yeah
38:14and you can come and see a bigger show even better maybe next uh month we'll flood the place and
38:19have
38:19mock naval battles why not yeah bread and circuses bread and circuses it's it's a great great phrase and
38:25it's absolutely true there must have been people killed here as well and the animals were being
38:29killed the animals were not killed uh in a futile manner because actually they would be taken right
38:33here to where we are they'd be butchered and then they would be cooked and fed to the poor um
38:37criminals
38:38were executed and you know we have this tendency to look at the romans and say who would sit there
38:42and
38:42watch people being executed but the executions were not entertainment we have to imagine that you
38:48know today it's very easy to get people's attention back then you had to build structures like this
38:52and once you've got the attention of 20 or 80 000 people you have a message so what's the message
38:57the message is the emperor rules but the message is don't break the rules of rome yeah and if you
39:02do
39:02you will see criminals being fed to lions or you'll see them having to fight each other to the death
39:07the gladiators are not part of that but they get mixed into through the centuries by essentially bad history
39:17how much of it do you think was staged or or choreographed a bit like wrestling today a great deal
39:22of it
39:22it's it's spectacle it's show look the romans were people who knew violence at a very very familiar
39:29level violence is everywhere in the ancient world so what you saw on the battlefield was not what you
39:35saw in the arena in the same way that what you see in the streets in a fight is not
39:38what you see in
39:39the movies so this is a show this is a cinema this is netflix uh the people that worked here
39:44knew that
39:45and they had to put on a show and who was going to see these games alex was it was
39:49it everybody was
39:50every stratum of society everybody yeah it's the great unified i think that's the thing that we
39:54underestimate why did the emperor do it well what does the emperor have in common with the common
39:58people nothing you know same with today what do we have in common with uh the prime minister the
40:05president united states not probably very much except that maybe we might go to a game one day we might
40:09sit in a stadium and watch the world cup final and say hey look there's the president over there i'm
40:14sharing a moment with him well go back 2 000 years the only thing that the emperor has in common
40:19with
40:20the common people is the game the popular amphitheater needed a regular supply of gladiators
40:28and rome's first gladiator school was built right here in capua however one of its students used his
40:38newfound knowledge and fought back against the romans so alex tell me about spartacus because his
40:45whole story is is located here in capua it is it starts here it does it does he's a great
40:52example of
40:52marketing he's a a roman auxiliary a soldier who's done something wrong he's sold into slavery and
40:58becomes a gladiator and he escapes he has he has followers with him and then he gathers more and more
41:04followers and it turns into a revolution yeah and i think why marketing is such a huge part of
41:10spartacus is because the romans marketed him as a great foe you have to beat someone who had the
41:15propensity to take down the republic which you probably didn't but you have to make it sound that
41:19way because then the romans triumph and ultimately they they write history so yeah yeah and he dies in
41:25his 30s he does yeah he does in his 30s but spartacus in three years does so much in his
41:30career
41:30that he's able to remember for 2000 years and look at us still here in ancient ruins talking about
41:36him so if there is an afterlife that i'm sure he'll be most proud of what we're talking about yeah
41:45it's chilling to think how much spilt blood these walls have witnessed
41:52much of it at the point of a favored weapon of the romans
41:57so you've got a sword and this is actually a gladius this is a gladius it's trick of the trade
42:02and of course gladiator is just swordsman it's not really a very complicated name but it's always nice
42:07to be able to you know hold the weapons and get a sense of them get a sense of the
42:11tools yeah it
42:12feels very light it's a short sword it is a short sword yeah it's it's well it's got dual purpose
42:17if
42:18it's on the battlefield it's to stab so you can see it's it's mostly about the point so you can
42:23imagine
42:23it would stab aim for neck so it's a thrusting it's a thrusting yeah it's not it's not as swinging
42:29like we see in the movies because of course it's a a short blade but also a thin blade so
42:34if that hits
42:34off something it might crack it might break okay so it's all about stabbing whereas in the amphitheater
42:39the uh gladius was thicker dulled yeah so it wasn't actually sharp imagine you're at the top there what
42:46are you seeing you you don't really have a great view but the sound makes part of it so the
42:50clanging
42:50was important and you wouldn't get that with the normal gladiator so it had to be a little bit
42:54thicker a lot thicker than they would have been on the battlefield yeah now this gladius feels quite
42:59light to me it should do because you start to see where spectacles involved because it's fake
43:05this is a prop from a from the film gladiator this is actually from gladiator this is actually from
43:10gladiator and as you can see it looks good it looks real but it's not and that's really a great
43:15summing
43:15up of gladiatorial combat it looks real but it's not it's got to look good it's got to attract you
43:20it's got to be a feast of the eyes a spectacular spectacular yeah this is going to draw you and
43:26and that's what movies do that's why movies are so great and i'm holding a famous sword you're
43:30you're holding a famous sword that hand is where russell crowe's hand once touched the most famous
43:35gladiator of all history of course before i get too carried away with thoughts of russell crow
43:40fantastic yes thank you for bringing it you're so welcome i need to think about leaving there's a
43:49certain train i need to catch i'm heading back to naples so i can change trains for the next leg
44:04of my
44:05journey oh money facing myself in naples for a few days has made me appreciate the wealth of roman
44:20antiquities in the area while pompeii will always be a top tourist attraction herculaneum and capua
44:28should be high on the agenda of any visitor
44:36i'm now on an intercity train heading towards rome the focal point of the empire
44:50we're getting close to rome now and there's going to be so much to see i know that but
44:56there's one really big burning question that i want to at least try to answer even if i can't
45:04actually answer it i want to try how does one city one city end up ruling a territory which stretches
45:13from western europe from what's now france and spain and britain all the way around the mediterranean
45:19to western asia and north africa how does all of that territory become roman
45:30join me next time when i reach the center of it all the city of rome
45:38i seek out a new archaeological park on a bike how amazing the first roman road the queen of roads
45:50and meet the archaeologists who've uncovered an etruscan settlement they would have interred
45:56the dead in an inhumation style on these platforms
46:00so
46:03so
46:12so
46:13so
46:14so
46:14so
46:15so
46:28Transcription by CastingWords
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